61 UdV 



POEMS. 



BY 



Z 



WILLIAM H. SAMUEL. 



35 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESS OF W\l. F. FELL & I 

1SS6. 



ft 21S " ] 



I I i ID. 
1886. 

WII-LIAM H. SAMUEL. 



What doth he, pr 
Obtrusive with the wordsman*s fay, 

That we should herd, 
When years are swift and life at speed, 

His idle chimes 

Mid our str&ng times f 
And wandering o % er the lustrous morn. 
Or rapt in splendors of the noon 

Of poesy \ 
And wrought with an impatient scorn, 

i pa thy, 
At tortured trope a/id d) n : 

Of rhyming hath the world content ; 
And who may \entf 

Or deems the wanderer of the heath 

His tin its 

Are singing birds t 
Or may he know, so far beneath, 

The starry heights of upper air, 
And chants celestial, native there, 
On lips sera p hie ally fair ? 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Abode, My. 69 

Accretion 91 

After Death 9 

Age to Appetite S5 

Albatross, The S6 

Animate 4 1- 

Appeal 

it 51 

Aspiring. 

Awaiting 1 1 

Beyond 57 

Bondage 56 

Brother, My 7° 

By Searching 92 

Children, The 59 

png 41 

ition 75 

Compensative 77 

Conservation 9 

Country, My 6S 

Daughter, My 16 

Days, The 43 

Death 61 

Decline 61 

Delaware, The 67 

Demise, A 94 

Denial 85 

v 



VI 

PAGE 

Desire 37 

Dying Babe, The 97 

Elf-King's Song 4 

Enfranchised S2 

Entrusting 95 

Eve 8 

Failure 66 

Finite 73 

Friends, My 12 

Goal, The 25 

Growth 1 

Heroism 93 

Human, The 13 

Intercession 53 

Interdiction • . . 95 

In the Spring 46 

Into the Light 15 

June "Mom 6 

Latter Me, The 64 

Lily of the Valley 45 

Little, The 19 

Living 8S 

Memories 21 

Men 57 

Microscope, The 7 2 

Militant 81 

Mocked 84 

Moments, The 5° 

Monition 3$ 



Vll 
PAGE 

Morn $ 

Morning Star, The 2 $ 

Nazareth °o 

No 58 

Numbered 86 

Once 26 

On the Height" 79 

Open Days 68 

Orion 3 2 

Peace 5 

Perfecting 9° 

jtence 4 

Prayer 47 

Present, The 23 

Rebuke ■ . . SS 

Keck' . The 14 

Records, The 34 

Remembiance 74 

Reminiscent 5- 

Reproach 71 

Response 70 

Resurrection 62 

Rhymer, The 3 

River, The 49 

Salutation iii 

Savage, Th : 20 

Self 89 

Serenade 22 

Sigh, A 36 

Sometime 65 



Vlll 

PAGE 

Summer Cloud 2 

Summer Days 10 

Sunset 48 

Taught 84 

Twilight 80 

Two 60 

Valour 72 

Village Spire, The 24 

Virtue 27 

Vision 16 

Voice of Creation 17 

Why 92 

Winter Days 42 

Within 14 

Worship 35 

Yea 59 

Years, The 62 



GROWTH, 

I stand on the shore of an endless sea, 
With the light in mine eyes of expectancy . 
I hear 'the voice of the Maker of me, 
And o'erfill my lips with a prophecy. 

There is world upon world on the spaces strown, 
And life after life in the futures sown ; 
And broadly I build on the laws which are known 
The ascents that rise to the foot of the Throne. 

I toil no more for the yellow gold, 

Nor make my name of the honor sold ; 

For the wreck of kingdom and creed 1 behold 

0]i the tides of being forever rolled. 

As brethren to me are the lofty and low, 
And only the wisdom of Christ 1 know 
As I walk the waters in troublous flow, 
Like the feet of Him in the olden glow. 

A facile mode doth win for the day, 
A servile cunning or brigand sway ; 
But lonely and long his patient way 
Who seeketh a rule to learn and obey. 

My work to the thought of God still ncars 
In whom the will of mine disappears, 

Till stronger than life, or its joys or its fears, 
I lay me in dust with the dead of the years : 

A germ that shall vivify in the light 
Which shineth upon the victors of right, 
Where souls expand like dreams of the bright, 
And eons account but as davs of deligrht. 



SUMMER CLOUD. 
On the breath of morn, 
Like a soul upborne, 

A mist, 

Sun-kissed 
From a brooklet bright, 
A mountain's delight, 

As I list 

And persist, 

With spirits of air 
The gentle and rare, 
I wander through 
The boundless blue. 

I waft along 
Buoyant and bright 
'Neath the summer's sway, 
Or lie 
Beyond the wrong, 

On high, 
Entranced with song 
Of the ones of right, 
And I float in light 
Through the lustrous day. 

At the ledge 

Of the world, 
On the sunset's edge, 

Long-lined or curled, 

I ope 

To you and hope 
The radiant portals 
Of the immortals : 



Behold ! 

The sea of gold : 
Its purple isles eternal : 
Their skies of the supernal. 

THE RHYMER. 

Friend, peace ! and yea, 
We know the lay : 
But lo, our thoughts are few, 
Our heart-beats wholly due 

For bread or gold, 
And be it told, 
A little name, 
Though of a shame. 

And if aweary oft, or wild, 

And dream we dreamed of a bweet child 

That laughed and wept, 

And played and slept, 

< )r are we shades and ever dead, 
With phantom daisies overhead? 

Yet time is gold, 

And we grow old, 

The world is always as we knew, 
What is the good and who the true ? 

Sing thou alone, 

Or make the moan, 

But only toil for us doth ring, 
The moment ruleth as a king; 

We will not fret, 

We would forget. 



PERSISTENCE. 

Though once was night, 

Yet men awaken in the light : 

And life doth last 

Though graves are near within the past: 

Though on the blast 

Are ceaseless whirled 

The wails of a forgotten world, 
The years quiescently unroll, 
The breath is not the human soul, 
And God remembercth the whole. 



ELF KING'S SONG. 

Queen of Fay ! 

Smiling May 
Now doth woo our roundelay : 

Silvering moon, 

Fairy's boon, 
Richly shall the trees festoon : 

Elf and ghoul 

Wildwood stroll, 
Wending to the upland knoll. 

Glow-worm's gleam, 

Starry beam, 
Airy spirit of the dream, 

Voice of night, 

Brooklet sprite, 
Melody of all delight, 

Piastening, 

Gladdening, 
Elfin love to light and sing. 



Tiny feet 

Graceful greet 
Grass whose pliant leaves entreat : 

Laughter low, 

Hearts aglow, 
Sylvan moments onward strow : 

Lustrous eyes, 

Love-lit skies, 
Realms of elvan paradise. 

Day doth die 

With a sigh, 
Coveting our pleasure nigh: 

Mortals weep 

In their sleep 
Longing tears for joy so deep. 

Love of mine '. 

Thou dost shine 
As the summer hours benign. 



PEACE. 
Nearing the Rest, 

My life's request ! 

The soul released 
On happy wing 
Doth sweetly sing : 

Hath wholly ceased 

Consuming fire 
Of fierce desire ; 
And loosed from passion dissonant, 

All madness passed, 
The hours come and softly chant 
Of joys that last. 



c 

JUNE MORN, EAST PARK. 

Lo, at my feet, 
Amid the dewy grass, the crickets greet 
The beauteous summer morn, chirping their lay 

Of life away. 

Thwart dreamy gaze, 
The dragon-fly, that doth my wish amaze, 
Betwixt the gleaming river and my soul, 

Attains his goal. 

Did passion sleep, 
Where were the wondrous thoughts that lie so deep? 
Whence the heroic wills, divine of life, 

Which conquer strife 

O being bright, 
Sun-hued, and nectar-sipping in the light ! 
And thou, abhorred, didst crawl in other sphere, 

A nauseous fear ? 

And thus shall I, 
A motive fair, on pinions white, yet fly, 
When Source Original of spirit-rays 

Inflames my days. 

The strengths are His, 
Who moveth forward on the centuries, 
Whose word enfranchised in the beamy Truth 

(lives endless youth : 

For now at loss, 
My will I strongly nail unto the Cross; 
And I believe in all thy life and death, 

O Nazareth ! 



The souk of men : 
And I do hear the fateful curse again ; 
For evil smiteth with a hidden law, 

And God is awe. 

We surely die, 
O summer-cloud within the blue so high ! 
And when the grassy sods oppress our brow, 

What carest thou ? 

Over the stream, 
Flits evanescence on the wings of dream ; 
And vaporous feet glide softly down caprice 

To the abyss. 

Ignobly vain, 
And lost in easy guile, whose years inane 
Lie low amid the dust, translated not, 

By all forgot : 

Less than thy mode, 
A serf of form, nor knowest the abode 
Where dwell the taught of Him, who wills to do 

The ever true : 

The vast of calms, 
Repose of potencies beneath the palms, 
His living thoughts the hills of heaven along, 

Whose breath is song. 

As spirit live, 
And lo, \our God shall to you gladly give 
The far beatitudes beyond your ken, 

O souls of men ! 



8 



MORN. 
How may I think on evil 

When the East is in mine eyes, 
And potently pulsates within, 

The life that never dies : 

For my steps are to the morning 
As the day's new call doth sound, 

And my feet upon the upland, 
And the spaces are around. 

There sin and self evanish 
On the words that I do pray, 

And hope and soul are soaring 
In the light that maketh day. 

There these men who are my brothers 
Become one again with me, 

And the universe is breathing 
In the life of Deity. 



EVE. 

The West hath purple and gold, 
And beyond is a life untold, 
But mine eyes dissolve in light, 
And my thought doth lack of might. 

O spirit of me possessed, 
By the sunset skies of the blest, 
And within me doth arise 
Emotion of Paradise. 

Buoyant on splendorous sea 
Of color and radiancy, 
Only the trance I know, 
And a prophetic glow. 



CONSERVATION. 

The world is still young, and gray hairs depart ; 
To unborn showers the sunshines call : 
The spirit of earth respondeth to all, 

And love is the speech of the human heart. 

So life is ever new to the new, 

Sweet lips are clinging, strong arms enfold : 
The thrust of being expelleth the old, 

And Nature unto her law is true. 



AFTER DEATH. 

And all hath been, 

With passing of the breath ? 

There was a life and death. 
What was, what is, O Sin, 

Demon of hell and hate 

The life of man all o'er, 

Or drearier and worse of state, 
A chaos in uproar ? 

Thy breath ? 
What saith 
The wandering air of thy lost part? 

Thy heart ? 
And thou mayst analyze the dust. 
Thy soul ? 
Thy spirit was a lust : 
And what doth memory unroll 

Upon life's book 
Before the introspective look ? 
Or speakest thou of dead caprice ? 
Tell what remains of passion in surcease. 



10 



SUMMER DAYS. 

O fair is the world I see, 

So wonderful to me, 

As I lie in the sun and the grass, 

And the breezes over me pass, 

Where the hills decline to the stream, 
And the clouds above me dream, 
And I think as a summer-god 
Ere earth by the human was trod. 

With coyness and love in chase 
In ripples across her face, 
The river looks up to the skies, 
And the blue is a lover whose eyes 

Are imaged within the flow 
Of the depths in movement below, 
While the trees are rivals in frown 
Where their shadows are falling down. 

The swallows are flitting between, 
With message of gracious mien 
On curves of their joyous sphere, 
Our world and a heaven so dear : 

And waiting within the air 
Enchantments of the rare, 
That seize my slumberous soul 
And all their hours unroll. 

O earth ! on thy bosom I lie, 
And the days are born, and die, 
And a portion am I of thy song 
On the skyey ways along. 



11 



And so is the life I would live, 
And this the love we should give, 
Expansive as summer in force, 
And true as the laws at their Source. 

For vain are the word and the rite, 
And the thought is still in the night, 
Whose limit is less than thy sphere. 
Who nameth our Father a fear. 

His will is a joy when we see, 
His just are the futures to be, 
And the universe gladdens before 
The face of the God I adore. 



AWAITING. 

And is it worth, 
The noise of earth, 
The labor vain, 
And self's chicane ? 

For I must let the moment glide 
That hath but passion or a pride, 
And close on me the outer door, 
That opens to the voice of roar, 

Whatever may 
The clamors say 
Of turbulence 
And lack of sense. 

There is a depth of inner thought, 
A silence with the presence fraught 
Of farthest wisdom I can seek : 
Thy servant heareth : Maker, speak ! 



12 



MY FRIENDS. 

I am not of the dust to-day, 
But buoyant on ocean of light, 
An ecstasy of delight, 

Where the ethers above me play. 

And though of the clay I am born, 
Still clinging unto its own, 
Yet a thought which is spirit alone, 

Upbeareth on wings of the morn. 

For fair as the world commands, 
Though the days were never anear 
That make us the old and drear, 

Yet fairer than summer lands, 

Are the beautiful souls I know, 

Unto whom 1 ever aspire, 

A freedom of truth high and higher, 
And they hallow the life below. 

Their lips hold a speech divine 
And their gaze doth meditate, 
While the blooms of virtue innate 

Among their purposes twine. 

O gentle they are and brave, 

With the mind like Ithuriel's spear, 
That willeth the right to appear, 

And their strength is more than the grave. 

Their silence communeth with me, 
And the times and spaces obey 
A scepjre more potent than they, 

A holy memory. 



13 



And my soul, I am sure, dieth not, 

iher these from my love ever fade, 
For of goodness the Kingdom is made 
And the Beautiful Ones begot. 



THE HUMAN. 

The heart is a living fire, 
And ail our years consume, 
Fierce heats that never illume, 

And He seemeth ever an ire. 

And my thought is a restless cry 
er the men that are, 
Unto the silence afar, 
Fur woe is theirs, and they die. 

And ever the desperate rush 

Of souls in agony, 

And in the futurity 
A horror of endless hush. 

O weary within the night, 
Waiting that day may break, 
Though angels of God awake 

Forever in the light. 

Not less is living a pain, 

And moan and madness arise 
On climbing waves to the skit 

Though peace eternally reign 

And voices and hearts be true 

In realms that count not the hours, 
In worlds that are never as ours, 

Remote in the infinite blue. 



14 



THE RECKLESS NOW. 

Ah, misery ! 

That I should see 
But toil and strife within my view, 
Still hate and death beneath the blue : 

O wondrous hue, 

The joy of me, 
The depths of true 

Which round us be, 
The heaven's blue 

That winneth me : 

A horror ever on my face, 
Folly and hell in glee and chase, 
A judgment coming on apace, 
O I do pray for thee, my race ! 

For I hear the rain-drops falling, falling, 
And the spirit-voices calling, calling, 
As the clashing waters loose their ires, 
And the demons madly hurl their fires, 

Till a desolation moaneth round the sphere, 
And a sigh of God appals Creation's ear. 



WITHIN. 

I wait 'mid the years now thronging fast, 
Reclining on memories of the past, 
Wondering over the magic fires 
Enkindling being and all its desires; 

Till presseth upon me a dread command, 
And droopeth my soul for the waters of truth, 
Or the hours glow in the suns of youth, 
And on my head is the Father's hand. 



15 



Thou land of the rose and the morning dew ! 
O days, the uncounted and the new ! 
And I lifted the banner of life on high, 
And thoughts came down to me from the sky. 

Then there met me the Evil in battle dire, 
And the surges of Death were climbing higher : 
But lo, I have crossed to another shore, 
And behind me the gulfs of hell do roar. 



INTO THE LIGHT. 

I will arise, 

And stand before my Father's eyes. 

I am thine own ; 
Vet I have strown 

The years with sin ; 
And I have been 

My life unto my soul a liar: 
And I am the ashes of a fire. 

Nor paltry strife 

For tawdry life ; 
No more the husks, nor with the swine, 
But let me dwell a servant Thine, 

Low in humility, 

And pure in purity. 

Breathe thou, my Lord, upon the spirit dead 
Mysterious effluence of the Will Divine, 
Alike in sun and virtue that doth shine, 

And lay a blessing hand upon my head. 



1G 

MY DAUGHTER. 

Remembering thee, O innocence divine ! 

I smite the serpent sins envenoming 

That lurk within my soul. O thoughts that bring 
An agony ! Far other years were mine, 
Did life and love of thee upon them shine, 

Than these in apathy now moldering. 

Ah, Christ ! forgive my threne. Is aught to spring 
Denied the light of heaven, from soil of Thine ? 

O wondrous, hallowing beauty of thy face, 
The dawn of joy eternal to my soul ! 

O lost from earth, and lost my life in thee, 
Unknowing more thy spirit's gentlest grace ! 
The days are long that slowly past me roll? 
While still and still I wait so wearily. 



VISION. 

Faint gleam of star, 
And deep adown the night, 
A phantom foot-fall light, 

I hear afar. 

A spectre drear, 

Outlined upon the gloom, 
With mocking gaze of doom, 

Slow draweth near. 

With impress deep, 

It writeth on my soul 

An infinite of dole : 
O but to weep ! 

Sepulchral sound 

Of ghostly laughter far, 
And vanisheth the star 

In night profound. 



17 



VOICE OF CREATION. 

On a day of June 
In the far away time, 
The roses and suns 
Of a splendorous noon 
Sang a laud and a rhyme 
To the blissful ones, 

Who wander the air 
With their gifts of the fair 
In the when and the where 
Of the Father's care, 

Outpouring the beauty, 
Enkindling the love, 

In their white-robed duty 
To Him above. 

In ; he slumber less eyes, 
With pain overfraught 

From the maddening thought 
That beateth the skies, 

Lo, earth can be kind 

And beautiful, 
Yet men will be blind, 

Undutiful, 

Dawned the glad surprise 

Of a light that came 

As a living flame, 
A beam of good from Paradise. 



is 



The poet upsprang 
And a melody sang 

To the thronging mart, 
That the people hear 
With a constant ear, 

And a wonder of heart ; 

And sounds of life are suddenly mute, 
Hushing gay laugh and fierce dispute: 

Sang a glad, free song 

On the wide air along, 

Like the voice of a star, 
" O wait on the Lord ! " 
And the men of his land 
And the nations afar, 
Forgetting the sword, 
Obeyed the command ; 

And the fraud did cease, 

And the fear was stilled, 
And Earth was peace, 

With a great joy filled. 

The poet is dead ; 
But the words which he said 
Harmoniously sound 
Time and space around, 

To Him who doth thrall 
The Now and the All, 
Sublime in accord, 
u Wait, O wait on the Lord !" 



19 

THE LITTLE. 

Is naught of earth for me to do 
That men name great, or God the true ? 
Shall the great stars pause in the sky, 
Or may the glow-worm live or die ? 

The earth doth cleave unto the sun, 
Nor her appointed cycles shun, 
Whilst Archimedes is a name, 
And Galileo's dust doth shame 
O'er centuries the Church's fame. 

And men shall come 

When I am dead, 

The word be said 
Though I am dumb : 

The days of earth will onward run, 
And still the meeds of time be won ; 
The inner thought and outer deed 
Unto the hour and man and need 

Shall potently, 

Or gleam the light 

Or gloom the night, 
The equal be. 

But on the licit modes I wait, 
Not speeding life as it were'lale, 
Nor live a dream though it be fair, 
Nor shrink from shadows of the air: 

Thus all my toils are climbing years, 
And I do rest beyond the fears. 
My hope the striving life outruns, 
My will is with the holy ones, 
My thoughts of God are molten suns. 



20 



THE SAVAGE. 

O bird ! thou once wast all a thrill 

In lands the ever bright, 
Thy vestures garnering the hues 

Of subtlest tropic light ; 

Thwart sylvan depths a flashing 

Of the fervors of the sky, 
Where swarthy grace on torrid blooms 

Doth languorously lie. 

The pallor of a brow and thought 

To lustrously adorn 
With form so fair in plumage 

Of the tintings of the morn, 

A rudeness of the modes uncouth 

Across the Northern seas, 
Doth smite thy summer life afloat 

Upon Elysian breeze. 

Sufficed not but thy robings 

Of the colors manifold, 
The purples and a saintly white. 

Cerulean and of gold ? 

But a songless soul shall haunt us 

As we look into thine eye ? 
And ye do mock us with the dead, 

O vanities that die ! 

Nor may the hour be lonely 

As with patience I await 
The dawn of resurrection 

In the voice of God elate, 



21 



Though I forsake the not humane, 
Nor cleave to the untrue, 

Ascending to the altitude 
Of Christ within the blue. 

thence to thee, my brother ! 
Delving far along the plain, 

1 send a message of the peace 
The silences contain : 

Soar high o'er malediction 
On the pinions of the wise, 

Until the laws of Love shall beam 
From thy transfigured eyes. 



MEMORIES. 

Moments and Mays : 
The birds and flowers, the lights and lays, 
The comrades and their gladsome ways ; 

And the maidens, 
Beauteous mingling, joyous aidance, 
Love in song over life's cadence : 

O they were dear 
Whilst yet anear : 
And sweet they are 
Though now afar : 

And it doth seem, 
My youth, my youth is floating o'er me, 
And all the years in smiles before me : 

Or did I dream ? 



22 

THE SERENADE. 

And they in song, making melodious night, 
A summer night soft wooing to its rest, 
With tender airs from open skies caressed, 

The while I lie on calmest hour's delight, 

As over all my gently flowing thought, 
Now ebbing forth into the depths serene 
Of sleep oblivious of the care terrene, 

The buoyancy of peace doth float unsought : 

Now tell me, Lord, what shall these singers do, 
Their voices woven with harmonious strings, 
Till their environment in music rings, 

Outspeaking joy to all the starry view ? 

For they are of the dulled who may not sec, 
Themselves but impulse of the moment's stress 
And atoms of the world's tumultuousness, 

Within, without, beyond inconstancy. 

Humane is now their hour, and radiant, 
And of the good which God creating saw : 
O that it were eternally their law, 

And they, O Lord, as I thy suppliant ! 

Help, Maker ! for my brethren whom I see, 
Or freest tramp were he Diogenes, 
Or servile ministry on formal knees, 

For all the wills that are divorced from thee ! 

Now mute the voice and motionless the chord : 
And if these lapse forever from the light ? 
O the dark horror of an endless night ! 

O piteous me, who call upon the Lord ! 



23 



I do invoke the thought thou hast in man : 
Since our just aspirations soar on high, 
And all which is, thy will within, doth lie, 

I pray for men that need, to God who can. 



THE PRESENT. 
Though earth is old, 
And doth enfold 
Beneath its mould 

Forgotten tribes the million named, 
And peoples unto others famed 
In eras of a tombless past, 
The splendors of the sky outlast; 

And doth renew 
Each morn and strew 
Its gracious dew 

On joyous leaf in gems of light, 
And thought ariseth from the night; 
The child-look is a wondering, 
And loves are borne upon the spring ; 

While dip 
And sip 
From emerald cup 
Their tiny thirsts, 
Or soaring up 

On hymnal bursts 
To lure 
The pure, 

In woven curves, melodious flight, 
The birds are warbling with delight ; 
And eyes earth-born a glory view ; 
To everv man life dawns anew. 



24 



THE VILLAGE SPIRE. 

Thy slender lines converging seek the skies ; 
About thy base a happy valley lies ; 
And me within, the higher thoughts arise : 

Or is there blessing for the men I love ? 
Or only tossing hands the seas above 
Of endless waste, nor flying yet the dove ? 

" A peace on earth ! " singeth the joyous view, 
Of summer suns the shiniftg landscape to, 
Whose distant hills are climbing in the blue ; 

And quiver lustrous airs and tiny soul 

Of bee and bird, and grace hath her control, 

Responses to the spirit of the whole. 

'Twixt thee and me the eye of gladness sees, 
And touch divine awakes the memories ; 
Aflow upon the winds are harmonies 

Of voices speaking unto Deity : 
And exaltation calleth unto me, 
And loose the bonds of my mortality. 

And e'en thy walls and silences afar, 

So near are laws that make and never mar, 

As contacts hallowing to the hamlet are ; 

And simple ways of saintly men have taught 
Unto the rude the gentle Christ, and wrought 
A resurrection in the dead of thought. 

But creeds evanish in the misty past ; 
The good is more than evil and cloth last ; 
And I aggrandize with the eras massed, 



25 



A throbbing might that overcomes the clay, 
And building every truth into the day, 
Advanceth as a majesty of sway. 

For I am of the Light ; and forth I thrust 
Resistless from the precincts of the just 
The dominations of aspiring dust, 

To live a whiteness as the lilies do, 
Upon the earthy hearts the right to strew, 
To wax and not to wane the a^es through. 



THE GOAL. 

Upon my face is the fountain's spray ; 
Within my spirit the rose's sway ; 
The winds and the trees are thrilling in kiss ; 
And beyond the shadow the sun is in bliss. 

But where is the free and unyielding blade, 
That spheres of right around me made ? 
And where the gleams and tints from above ? 
And the pure one whom my angel did love ? 

Transmuting to self the victories wrought. 
Behold I dwelt alone with my thought ; 
While beyond was the everlasting man 
And movements of a Maker in plan. 

Then I spake in the might of a soul that would live, 
With the belief in God which truth doth give, 
The earth is neither a crime nor a play, 
There is a law, and I will obey. 



26 

ONCE. 

" For the man doth descend, 
And death, 
Ere he cometh to worse, 
Lest I make there an end 
Of breath 
With a lasting curse." 

Lo, their windows do ope 
The skies ; 
Broken up the great deep 
In its founts ; but a hope 
Allies 
Where acclivities creep 

'Neath the menacing cloud : 
The plain 
Is a gulf; and the slime 
In the home of the proud 
Is stain, 
As their hideous crime. 

And the hills are a throng 

Of fear : 

And a cry from the frail, 

The despair of the strong, 

Appear, 

As they slay and bewail. 

And the rain still abides, 
An ire 
On the heavens all o'er ; 
And the deluging tides 
Aspire, 
Till the land is no more. 



27 



And the ocean is there, 
A might ; 
To the pure as a peace ; 
But the wave and the air 
And night : 
Doth the evil then cease ? 

And the raven is loose, 
Away 
Over drear and the mute ; 
And his rapine and use 
A prey 
With the waters dispute. 

From the East to the West, 
The dove 
On the winds o'er the lost, 
Where the Seas are a rest 
Above 
Faces dead and up-tossed. 



VIRTUE. 

Be greater than thy state, nor let the man 

A littleness appear within the plan : 
He hath not of the innate majesty, 
A dyke unmoved against the outer sea 
Of wildness and unresting savagery, 

Who reacheth ne'er beyond his obligation's span. 

Thou canst attain unto the perfect peace 
Through all the changes which the years release ; 
A standing strength of faith that measureth 
Beyond the fleeting of a human breath, 
And with the everlasting travailleth : 
But thou must hallow every day with thine increase. 



28 



THE MORNING STAR. 

My thoughts unclose to thy shining, 

O herald of orient light ! 
And the delicate tints defining 

Make me as one of the Bright. 

I have waited intensive longing, 

Aweary of groping as blind, 
And the discontents were thronging, 

And I sought a peace to the mind. 

Have I left the threshold of sorrow ? 

Am I breathing the balms of the blest ? 
And open mine eyes on the morrow, 

Which I saw last eve in the West ? 

Where I stood an adoration, 

And the child's humility, 
And I asked for the Christ's salvation : 

Hath he given a Kingdom to me ? 

Waking is more than sleeping, 
And the dawn inspires my gaze, 

Till a wish impassioned is leaping 
The distances that amaze. 

From Hesper out on the star waves, 

And Sirius hath a command, 
And peradventure afar laves 

The heavenly isles where stand 

The sons of the morn respiring 
A goodness void of the strife : 

O what is the bad that is miring 
A struggling and lower life ! 



2y 



And I feel I could hate the Giver, 
When consciousness speaketh amain, 

And there floweth before me a river, 
And its waves are a rage of pain. 

But a will of right when dying, 
We are naught of executive ; 

And naught is our wisdom flying 
The moment and best we would live. 

But still the duty bindeth, 

We shall wash us and be clean ; 

And the seeing eye that findeth 
Is ablution of the mean. 

Still forth on the spaces unlighted 

By ever a ray we see, 
Past all the realms of the nighted, 

To immortality. 

I come from the land of the dreaming, 
And so straight I look unto thee, 

I wonder whether is gleaming, 
The star or the soul of me ! 

Or hath not the rock a being 

That knoweth a gladness occult ? 

For we are most the unseeing 
When we vaunt us the only cult. 

And the clasp of the atoms showeth 
A passion, they please and cling ; 

And aversion implacably goeth 

With their prides and hates as a king. 



30 



But the winds have the touches and voices, 

Expressions of inner might ; 
And the grass in my look rejoices 

As mine eye sendeth love as a light. 

Seraph ! I kneel at thy portal, 
From the earth-*vorld hither astray, 

And I fear in this glow immortal 
My being consumeth away. 

My sight with thy glory is blinded, 

And oh ! I did long to see 
My Lord, were only he minded 

A while to listen to me. 

Unto Dante, divine one, was vision 
That lived in this splendorous flow, 

But I am the weak and derision, 
But I am a prayer, I know. 

And Milton sublimest, advancing 

On song to the Throne : 
But God is ever enhancing, 

And each hath an utterance known. 

So high are the heavens above us, 
And thronging the suns around, 

I) >th the Christ forget he did love us ? 
Ah ! where can he be found ? 

1 may not be other than sadness, 

For hope illudeth our toils, 
For men are but methods of madness, 
And evil forever despoils. 



31 



Our earth hath many a learning, 
But the agony, too, is great ; 

And within us an infinite yearning 
That only he can sate. 

The years are rilled with hating, 
Just as he knew them before, 

And dully the priests are prating, 
And we believe no more. 

Ah, night and a piteous sighing ! 

And a breath hath ceased to be : 
And a dawn comes after the dying : 

l>ut what is the day to me ! 

We do not, nor hark to the teaching, 
Impatient and of the slow : 

Within us the wills outreaching, 
Without us the deaths bestrow. 

Much I marvel the missions celestial 

Do visit and never tire ; 
And I loathe myself in the bestial, 

And my face is a shame of fire. 

Take thou my hand and guide me, 
Or I faint the farther to know, 

And, Spirit ! he will not chide thee, 
For he was man below. 

And then the angel undying, 

Whose home is the morning star, 

A silence upon him lying, 

His grand eyes tender and far, 



32 



Wafting summer with plying pinion 
On ethereal waves of song, 

Doth leave his lustrous dominion 
For me. of the clay and the wrong, 

Upon the measureless spaces, 
Oft meeting the Fair Ones aflow, 

Benediction in their faces 

For the children of men below, 

The Light of the Morning flying 
Where mortal may not speak, 

Through a thousand centuries sighing 
The Father's self I seek : 

When, like a salutation, 

The thoughts of God ensphere, 

And instant as inspiratio-n 
The Presence doth appear. 

As I think, lo ! such is my hour, 
So the futures are born of the past*;, 

And I walk with the Truth in powei 
Along the life that lasts. 



ORION. 

The glory of the morning I inhale : 

And earth may not the more of splendor show 
Unto the vision of the mortal veil 

Than ere the dawn the East with orbs aglow, 
With depths whence all responsive lights still fail; 

And in my soul the awes of God do grow. 



33 



Another life I am, and born anew, 
Upon the measures of the sky to dwell ; 

Expanse of vast obedience to the true, 
With every motive dead that did rebel 

And in the dust beneath the grass and dew ; 
And lifted eyes above the ways that fell. 

It can not be, O far sublimity ! 

Whose radiant force o'er all ethereal miles 
Exalteth me as a divinity, 

Thou winnest of my faith as one beguiles, 
And to my yearning art but mockery, 

Saluting time as victor with thy smiles, 

Whilst I should lie forever in the clay : 

With thy refulgence streaming through the night, 

And I a gladdening within thy ray, 

A prayer unto the One who made thee bright, 

No longer looking out upon the day, 

Nor known unto the rapture of the right ! 

But though so hideous fate did me enfold, 
And I were not to live beyond the grave ; 

Yet more is goodness than the earthy gold, 
And I shall not abase me to the slave 

Of subtleties and shames which are the mould 
Of all the little triumphs of the knave : 

Yet I will be a freedom, nor of wrong, 
In movement to the God whom I desire, 

A rectitude the seeking years along, 
A will that shall await and never tire, 

To cease as doth the spirit of a song, 
The expiration of a soul of fire. 



34 



THE RECORDS. 

I dread the glance within 

Time-worlds of human thought, 
The centuries of sin, 

Abysses horror-fraught, 

Eons of shapeless soul, 

Geologies of mire, 
Foul vastnesses that roll 

Around the mystic Fire. 

On tidal sway of wrong 
Creepeth a constant moan 

The ages far along 

Unto the Things of stone. 

The ill for daily bread, 
Hearts mask in mockery, 

And vanished are the dead, 
The Christ in agony : 

Whirleth a wrath in curse, 
Selves whom moments exalt, 

Smiting in death, and worse, 
Strength of a world at fault. 

O night adown the sea, 

A little boat adrift, 
And eye doth never see 

Where the horizons lift. 

O Life ! art friend or foe, 
Union of thine and sod, 

With evil's interflow, 

And all the need of God. 



35 
WORSHIP. 

My will is mine, 
And this my being cometh of divine ; 

And I arise, 
Immortal soul between the earth and skies, 



Unawed to see 
Within the wonders that upon us be ; 
With just request unto the higher life 

Beyond the strife. 



Insurgent movement to the day, 
Battling the despotic sway 

Of time and clay, 

I will arise 
Unto the vision of the wise : 
And I shall list what say the seers 

Through all the years 

Till God appears. 

And with a steadfastness I bind 
Unto my life the truths I rear, 
Or of the atom's mystic sphere 

Where soul in matter is confined, 



Or of the cycles of the star 
Where spirits know of what they are, 
Though human will halts on the fears, 
And souls weep ever inward tears, 
And earth is old with waiting years. 



36 



ASPIRING. 

There is a goal beyond the grave, 
A mode of thought the soul to save : 
Or were I then the more than life, 
Not entering the lower strife, 
A wrath withheld from vengeful blow, 

Nor scattering ill on winds to flow, 

Repenting the wrong which I may do, 
Enduring in patience and still be true, 
Forgetting the lusts, so I may see 
Him who is God of the pure that be. 



A SIGH. 

The wail of despair, 

As thy spirit passed 
In death of the cross 

Struck heaven aghast : 

O Christ ! whom have we, 
Sin-thralled, woe-upheaping, 

To sorrow for us 

So hopelessly weeping. 

Wast thou not o'ertasked, 
Didst faint, and e'en fall ? 

O we are but men, 
Thou, Master of all ! 

Have pity for us 

So bitterly sighing : 
O Giver of life, 

Behold, we are dying ! 



37 



DESIRE. 

Ah, vanity ! 
For I would be 

As verdured field, 

As grasses underlying, 

Unceasing fructifying, 
Their values yield : 

As sun-bursts wide o'erspraying, 
And light-worlds far outlaying, 
A spirit's pauseless saying : 

" Ye ones of earth ! 

Why cling to dearth ? 
Still conscious of a higher warn 
Within your being's inmost hatiur 

Whence vaguely soul doth go 
On wanderings to and fro :'' 

In tones full excellently sweet, 
With words that lovingly entreat : 
1 There is a home of joy seen face to face. 
The presence of our Father's strength and grace. 

The Father and of me, 

Whose countenance I scan, 
For whom right willingly 
My every worth to give, 
As lowliest servant live, 

I pray and will and can. 



38 



MONITION. 

There came a message to me : 
O the words were woe to see ! 
And I was as a shame in the light 
And my soul fled into the night. 

For better the darkness and naught, 
Than evil in the thought ; 
And rather a death and the dust 
Than centuries not of the just. 

And still must I veil mine eyes 
And hide me from the skies, 
When broodeth a memory 
Over the dreary sea 

That wasteth within the past, 
With madness overcast : 
And I would 1 never knew 
The sacrifice of the true. 

Alas ! in the years so long, 

The right must be learned through the wrong ; 

When only to see the way, 

So easy it were to obey. 

Yet the spirit can not be breath, 
And life should be after death ; 
Or lament is over the race, 
And derision seemeth His face 

Unto the strengths below, 

That ever and fiercely go 

Whither the joys do gleam, 

Or realms of the new like a dream, 



S9 



Rise from the mists and expand, 
Or duty and courage stand 
As the majesties of life 
In a high and holy strife 

For the vantage land of time 
And a future in the sublime, 
Where men are unto the Right 
Obeisance and a delight. 

It was naught of the dream. She is dead. 
And this had the message said ; 
And I seemed like him that is bound 
In turmoil of sight and sound. 

Should I weep, the lawless will, 
Or a wrath be, or the still ? 
And I lifted reproach on high, 
And long I gazed on the sky. 

But a silence was lying there 
Upon the pacific air, 
And came no responsive rest 
Unto the weary quest. 

Then the deep recesses of thought 
Where sitteth the soul, I sought, 
Letting the world go by 
And its myrmidons do and die. 

For what is a man to me 
Save in his constancy 
The day and during the night 
Within the progressive right ! 



40 



But the rest are a cry, " Unclean ! M 
And I make the spaces between 
Where herd the bestial of mode 
Content in their loathsome abode. 

And the foolish tongue may rail, 
But the law doth never fail, 
And limited every way 
Are the evil in their day ; 

The lower in joyous realms 
Where the earthy overwhelms 
The expression of happy hour, 
And slain is the spirit's power. 

O the days were of revelry, 
And my will a victory, 
As I scattered the shining gold, 
And moved as a king of the bold, 

Strewing of honor and bread 
The path my fancies led, 
Forgetful that things of the earth 
None other are than their birth, 

And all the forces of me 
As the yesterdays must be. 
And yet the eye of my youth 
Afar had discerned the truth, 

Fallen down from the skies 
And germinant in the wise, 
Fashioning sin and the moan 
Into the white of the Throne : 



41 



There liveth a law to the mind, 
And holiness unconfined 
And immortality 
Shall his the portions be 

Who hearkens its voice unto, 
And doth with desire pursue, 
While evil in hand with the worse 
Is the fate of extinctive curse. 

For the stolid is he that doth think 
Of the cup unrighteous to drink 
And conquest is to his crime 
If Justice abide but a time. 

But though the wicked unite, 
I will serve my God in the right, 
And my soul shall live as a song 
Where the seraphs of heaven throng 

The beatific ways 

In the light of the Length of Days, 
A wisdom, by searching taught, 
A splendor, of goodness wrought. 



CLOGGING. 

The ear adapteth to the word received, 
Advancement languishes in assuetude : 

The act exhibiteth the rule believed, 

And creed doth ask an option of the crude. 



42 



WINTER DAWN. 

To the hill away and unto the morn, 

Into the morning hie ; 
Of a love of earth I am purely born, 

I am born of a love and the sky. 

The daisies deep in the winter sleep, 
The frost imps thrust their spears, 

The moon to her rest doth coldly creep, 
A rest in the West appears. 

The blades of grass have sheaths of white, 
There is white, and the trance of song : 

But in mine eyes a living light, 
A light from the seraph throng. 

O the dearth around to the dreary bound, 

A dearth of holy strife, 
And a sigh am I to the Mind profound, 

For worse is death than life. 

But the hues of East are wondrous fair, 
They are robes of the saintly blest ; 

And summer with them the angels bear, 
In our sunny ways confessed. 

Though there be sin, and a care within, 
When the brave thought loses sway, 

Yet where the evil and grief begin, 
Beginneth my day to pray. 

For beyond the here and beyond the there 

The Maker dwelleth peace ; 
And here and there and everywhere 

He giveth without cease : 



43 



To the slumbering hill and the meek of will, 

A hope, a hope doth give : 
And though my heart like the rill be still, 

The soul that loves shall live. 



THE DAYS. 

As though in solemn mockery, 

They come, they come, they rlee, they flee, 

A strange and gliding phantomrv, 

And men a hideous madness be, 

And if an earth were all, 
The sin would more appal, 
Toying with life and soul, 
Unconscious of their dole ; 

A weary clink of gold 

Expiring on the air, 

Or sheeny earths the rare 
The living moments hold ; 

In wanton fancies o'er the sensual, 

In trivial function or imperial : 

Till men are monotones, as madness is, 

With crowns of straw, meandering nonsenses 

Of mine and me 
Over dead soul. 
And night engulfs the whole 

Pitilessly. 



44 



ANIMATE. 

The fear of the hour, 
The dread of the power, 
Which are not of thee, 
Dwell not within me, 

Enslaving the life, 
Arousing the strife, 
O Peace in my soul ! 

Rest at the goal ! 

To sin, direst foe, 
That urgeth to woe, 

1 bend not the knee, 

O Truth, who dost free ! 

O'erthrown, I arise, 
And faith still defies, 
For thou art my sword, 

Word of the Lord ! 

All malice and wrath 
Which throng in my path, 
Nor hideous mirth 
Of evil of earth ; 

Not death's patient wait 
Or hell's endless hate, 
Shall hide me from sight 
Of the Christ, O my Light! 

1 prostrate in awe 

To love-chastening law 
My face in the dust, 
O thou of the just ! 



45 



Still my soul hymneth sweet 
Unto thee, Grace replete, 
For thou dost redeem, 
O my Savior supreme ! 



LILY OF THE VALLEY. 

Could I but speak, 

As thou to me, 
Unto my brethren who the wrong do seek, 
Whose mode must still an evanescence be ! 

They should awake 
Unto the marvel of a day humane, 

And they would make 
The beauty which the good attain. 

Mysterious, far, 
Thy subtile fragrance seemeth on the air ; 

And we are near. 
Thou art a message from another where 

Low breathing here, 
The gates of thought celestial to unbar. 

Within the dell, 
The grace abiding meekly there, 

And doth me tell 
Of souls that are diviner care 

Beyond the strifes of clayey birth. 

I greet thee, excellence of earth ! 
Bloom thou for me in valleys of the blest, 
When God shall give me to his holy rest. 



4G 

IN THE SPRING. 

The wonder of the May : 
Within my pulse the cadences of hope ; 
And mystic songs the gate of joy do ope 

Unto the living way. 

If aught be growth awry, 
A blossom of the summer's hour ornate, 
Or soul that of its Source may meditate, 

Shall man its mode decry ? 

The all is mystery : 
Our reverence unto the moss is due, 
Nor nearer are the footprints of the true 

Who walk where Christ is free. 

Wherever I shall stand, 
The awes within confess the holy ground ; 
And well I fear to trespass at the bound 

Where right doth have command. 

Not thee, Sufficient One ! 
Hath deed of mine wrought harm when to the wrong 
My will descends the wanton ways along 

Where death is and no sun. 

But I have sacrificed 
Unto sensation's fierce and fitful hour 
The worths that should have made enduring power, 

In holiness baptized. 

The hurt is even mine ; 
And patience with my frailties do I learn, 
As to the just my years so slowly turn 

And merge in the divine : 



47 



To me a lower sphere, 
Dejection from the heights where is the good, 
Where never force of sating self hath stood 

Triumphant of career. 



PRAYER. 

O God ! I full aspire 
Emotion of the higher, 

Continuous flight divine 

Of Holy Spirit thine, 
The far ascent of soul infused in thee, 
The realm of saint and sanctity ; 

And dwelleth there 

My constant prayer ; 
And thence the hallowing came, 
A bright, irradiant flame, 

Whose lambent grace 

Illumined Stephen's gaze, 
Sublime in peace and truth 
Before his foes, 
As though an angel's face, 

Beholding they in fixed amaze, 
Nor touched their heart with ruth, 
But wrath arose, 

And fiercer hate 
Gnashed wild to sate 
A murderous thought, 
E'en while amid the hellish din 
The dying lips besought, 
"To them lay not the sin !" 



48 

SUNSET. 

I proffer, Lord, a day, 
As ebb the splendors of the dying sun 
Majestical away, 
Ere Gloom, that hateth of the bright, 
Within his darksome vast of night, 
The outer vision of thy bliss hath won : 

A full and dazzling sea 

Of white and mystery, 
Ensphered within the gleams of golden shore; 

While magic isles, 

Where naught defiles, 
In radiance floating all the wide West o'er, 

Of ever-shifting hue, 

Do slowly, slowly glide 

Aclown the lustrous tide 
From clinging mortal view, 

Whither the joy of Thee beguiles, 

Through endless, shining, skyey miles, 

Where flow 
The saints in light who of the Christ intone, 

And glow 
The angel presences around the Throne. 

Transfused with bliss, the meek and suppliant knee 

I bend, 
Embosomed in the broad effulgency, 
That to my faint and wandering earthly gaze 

Doth lend 
A transient glory from the eve ablaze. 



40 
THE RIVER. 

As a thing of light, 
Like a human soul 
The good and fair, 
I loved with a might 
And a spirit whole, 
O Delaware ! 

The motions of bliss, 

Reflecting each beam 

In thy glint and gleam, 
The heavens kiss. 

The smile of the airs, 
Dissevered from cares, 

From around the world, 
And the wind's glad laugh, 
As it sweeps to quaff, 

With wide wings unfurled, 

New life from thine, 

O heart the benign ! 
Are gleefully rippling thy happy face, 
Joyously greeting with billowy grace. ' 

Dost remember the boy ? 

Wishful and coy, 
A growth in the gladness of summers mine, 

Kneeling to thee, 

Drawn within thy mystery, 
Innocence raptured of the divine, 



50 



A love in life upon thy kisses 
Ecstasy floating on thy caresses, 
The days in throng 
And jubilant song, 
And so clear 
Was the year. 

Below were the central depths of thy soul, 

And far on high 

The ethers did roll 
Their lustrous billows across the sky : 

And the child seemed there 
As a spirit fair, 

Buoyant in bliss of immortal air, 
Resting on wings of radiancy, 
Alone amid immensity. 

To me, O River ! 

Thou art as The Giver, 
O the broad and the deep and the strong ! 
Flowing and flowing the cycles along, 

Like a joy of God. 

Till time hath trod 

In weariness 

And search of bliss 
The limit of the finite to the rest 
Eternal of the realms by peace possessed 



THE MOMENTS. 

Ye are born and ye are dying, 
Fading out in the abysses 
Of the dead forgetfulnesses, 

And we hear your souls asighing. 



51 



On the dreams and changes hying, 
We are gliding to your kisses, 
To your passionate caresses, 

For your adoration vying ; 

We, the moments, hither flying, 
Wavy forms of all the graces, 
Light of hope upon our faces, 

Throbbing, thrilling to you nighing. 

Men of earth ! deny the ever, 
Clasp us to you ne'er to sever, 
Floating out on the forever 
Of Oblivion's lost river. 



ASCENT. 

Not throned on pride, nor merged in all un worth, 
And pondering our wondrous birth, 

I urge the will unto supreme control, 
Still forcing the material bent, 
Appeal of earth to earth, 
Within the sovereignty of soul, 
Inconstancy the Form's content, 
Oft wantoning in subtle mirth, 
And songs of Death round Evil's birth, 

The higher in the lower to entwine 
With fascinations serpentine, 
Till a great curse doth overlay the life, 
And man with destiny is thrust in strife, 

With a long patience wearying the stars, 
Or ever tuggeth, tuggeth at the iron bars. 



52 

REMINISCENT. 

Now, let the old philosophy pry, 

And a modern science descry, 

But for you and me of the common, my boy, 

Why, only to live is a joy. 

Life is good, and we live, and our lips are a song, 
And the vexing pain disappeareth along. 
Twenty years, dear friend, to the surging youth back, 
Nor fortune nor fame hath followed our track. 

We were sure then of both : and the purity, 
A dream of the heights inwoven free 
With tints of the morn o'er a summer sea, 
Where virtue embarked as a chivalry ! 

And the twenty years hence ; what then shall we say ? 
Never mind ; let us work while yet it is day. 
What's the future to us, while the heart beats strong! 
And God is above, should we glide to the wrong. 



We will sing in the sun ; when the night comes, pray : 
Toil and wait, smile and help ; and sometimes astray. 
O Christ ! here's the life : yes, we could better it now, 
But take, please, as it is, we are tired enow: 

To work is the hard, the time groweth long, 

Tired of joy e'en and action, of heart-beat and song : 

For who hath a peace save the lower intent ? 

And the higher would die for the future content. 



53 
INTERCESSION. 

If straightly I might come to thee, 
Nor drift upon a wandering sea ; 
Or what am I whom thou may est hear 
Where generations disappear ? 

But only I so love my race 
To plead their woe unto thy face, 
Forgetful of my low estate, 
Remembering the hearts that wait. 

No speech is mine, but sympathy 
With vast, unceasing agony, 
Whose cry endureth as a fate, 
Nor "Dust to dust!" can suffocate. 

To serve what we thereafter spurn, 
Through dread recoil the rule to learn, 
With childhood's ways the overpast, 

And evil luring to the last, 

Our wills are flowing vanity, 
And goodness is the yet to be, 
Hovve'er we impiously claim 
The sacred impulse of thy name. 

A brevity to meditate, 
A little wisdom gathered late, 
It is so long before we know, 
And whither are we hence to ^0 ? 



54 



A faith the true, the will so straight, 
With patience moving at my gait, 
And strong as death when cometh he, 
I am thy service utterly. 

But these that never find the way, 
Who far and farther are astray, 
A shifting hour upon the night, 
A frenzy of the moment's flight, 

Fierce ignorance within thy fane, 
The virtue of a nation slain, 
The moan that wanders everywhere, 
Unspoken curse when dies despair: 

And though their wills be fully said, 
Nor sin nor sorrow more the dead, 
They know not what the years h. vc meant, 
And when they cease, art thou content? 

The once that man hath looked on thee, 
Shall make his path forever free, 
And not again can menace him 
The phantoms of a twilight dim. 

But darkness close about him lies, 
And mystery upon the skies ; 
He hears the multitudes of sound 
Which throng him from creation round : 

lie would be one and not the less 
Amid the mighty human stress, 
And scarce with purpose of the wrong, 
In passion of his youth and strong, 



55 



Upon the field of time he sows 

The deeds whose harvest is the woes 

He reapeth in the after years 

Of cares and pains and dearths and fears. 

And oft, alas ! that it should be, 
A horror seemeth it to me, 
He passeth out into the night, 
And lost forever from the right. 

Yet he would love if he could see 
The excellence of Deity; 
]>ut now he treads the vale of ills, 
While Vision sitteth on the hills. 

Then not his heart is of the bad, 
But wisdom he hath never had ; 
And I must think thou once shalt give, 
That he may look and for thee live, 

The vaster eye of skyey space 
Which doth behold the Father's face, 
When not a soul of love shall sigh, 
Nor fill with hate until it die : 

But light shall at the portal stand 
Of every thought that may command 
The acts which enter to the day, 
And doubt have never more to say. 

A breath of summer in the air, 
A song that winneth here and there, 
The tribes of men discern a law, 
And all is good as first He saw. 



5G 



BONDAGE. 

Upon the day enthrones a grief, 

And there is never a relief, 

Though thought should hasten to the skies 

And prayer be in the speaking eyes : 

But sits the soul and looketh on, 

On torturer and agony, 

A maniac calm of vacancy 
Imposed the stricken life upon ; 

Or clutcheth throttling at the woe 

Only to know 
The soul and sorrow are but one, 

The two are one ; 

Or would be gone out from its hell, 

What this may be, 

With gayety 
Or toilsome hour, despair to quell; 

But shuddereth 

And more than death 
Ever to view a mocking pain 
Fast by the thought in movement vain 

Other to be ; 

Thought never free 
But when the spirit mergeth still 
The living force in higher will, 
And writes upon the human breath 
Which earth no more remembereth 

Beyond the grave, 

" To God who gave !" 



57 



MEN. 

The broadest thought is all a quietude, 
The strongest self a fierce activity : 

This rendereth to Caesar plenitude, 
And that soliciteth for Deity. 

And thus the epic of a world is made, 

Perplexed comminglings of the dust and mind, 

And all a ghostly gliding to the shade, 

And at the marge the farther look confined. 



BEYOND. 

Somewhere the virtues reign, 
And the spirit forms contain 
A wisdom not of the vain. 

I thrill to the righteous soul ; 
But what is light to the mole ! 
And the crawling ones are a dole. 

O the love when the pure unite, 

An evil be far from the sight, 

Nor the day overcome by the night ! 

The force that maketh a woe, 
And the prides of the men below, 
Are laid with the dust, we know. 

The lie must be under the sod, 
And the nations beneath the rod 
Shall enter the times of God. 

And there will the goodness be, 
The truth roam fair and free, 
And I my Lord can see. 



58 



NO. 

I had left the land 
Where youth doth stand 
As a hope untried 
By a crystal tide. 

And the evils arose 
Encircling as foes, 
A desperate strife 
Of a soul with life, 

A thrust and unrest 
On the endless quest 
Of earth in content, 
Of ftte to be rent. 

Unreasoning, lost in pain, I said, 
With a bitterness as of the un blest dead : 
Were it not better to joy in the sin, 
The mind a vague or a whirl within ? 

Better than thinking unuttered curse, 
Scoffing at good and challenging worse, 
To live a folly as doth the fool, 
Caprice the ever-wavering rule ? 

Hypocrisy creeping along his career, 
Vice in descent unto haunt of the drear, 
A little cunning o'ercoming the less, 
The strength of a day the right to oppress ? 

O nay and nay ! I am other than sod, 
Upon my heart inscriptions of God ; 
Nor irksome the duty that teacheth to wait, 
And the servant of truth is the onlv great. 



50 
YEA. 

The frosts and sleeps are past, and blossoming 
Doth nature promise of her plenteousness, 

And gladness cometh with the beauteous spring, 
And all the land is future happiness. 

Hath then the look on heaven undefined, 

The spirit peering at the altitude, 
None other vision in the farther mind, 

And but vagary and the false obtrude ? 

No realm where frameth ampler speech of ( hie 
Who is the nought through dim, progressive Lii 

Whence nebulae and verities are spun, 
And the felicities ordain the clime ? 

I. were a sadness even to the wise, 

And I discern the demons in their mirth, 

If man should open nevermore his e; 
The universe oblivious of his birth. 



THE CHILDREN. 

How love without a tainture doth expand 
And I enfold the children in embrace, 

The little ones that h^ld me in command, 
Whose angels still behold the Father's face ! 

That they must meet the ill along the years, 
And wear a guilt within, by day a shame, 

The impious to overbear the fears, 

To fall, and fall, and fall below a name. 



60 



TWO. 



Facility may live the world an ease, 
The orgies of the hour to her enure: 

But just simplicity shall conquer peace, 
And the immortals to her breast allure. 



NAZARETH. 

And if he were but man, that holy Past, 
And sleepeth with the dead who never rise, 

His voice is adequate unto the vast, 

A worth of will outwclling from the wise. 

He speaks a life to me and of to-day, 

And as I see him I do try to be ; 
Nor can I find another certain way 

That openeth upon eternity. 

My best is done beneath his guiding eye, 
Accords that thrill on heights of happiness, 

And as the gracious lines surmount the sky, 
Relapse the frets into the mistiness. 

If now not Deity, yet he hath been : 

And if our God should clothe him Son of man, 
He were not more than Christ who knew no sin, 

And being is the miracle I scan. 

And let the measure still be iterant, 
For I have felt the sequence of the sad, 

And I will not be a participant 
Of turmoil on declivities of bad. 



61 
DECLINE. 

If yet adown the days I must descend 
Where pain and penury abase a pride, 

This be the Will, but Oh ! the grace extend, 
May never conscience o'er my fall deride. 

The fatuous word ! when still the need can press, 
A lowliness, of self-distrust, be born, 

That I may rise the greater from the less, 
A flight of spirit o'er the ways forlorn. 

Then let my wrong return unto my woe 
And in the near and be the manifest, 

Until the stature of the truth I grow, 
And habitudes of law my soul invest. 



DEATH. 

And I shall die : O the transforming thought ! 

Plxhilaration wings and lifts and soars 
To know the truth the mortal ever sought : 

And on my lips the ashes of the lores. 

And who is trepidation at the sky ? 

Who longeth not beyond the stars to go ? 
For I am not the summer's golden fly, 

But soul within and depths of joy or woe. 

" Well done !" I seek, as unto Abdiel ; 

The greater conquests are concealed from pride 
And only angel can the wonder tell 

Where spirit is with spirit the allied. 



02 



THE YEARS. 

There is wringing of the hands, 
Fear and awe on all the lands, 
For the evil days have come 
And the hearts of men are numb. 

Sounds of weeping on the air, 
In the wicked soul despair, 
For the times have fully run, 
And a judgment hath begun. 

There are eyes bloodshot, and curses, 
Ever burdened are the hearses, 
And a grim, unyielding terror 
Smiting out the forms of error. 

O the pain on all the faces, 
O the suffering of the races, 
In the thousandfold recoilings 
Of the law on all dcspoilings ! 

Yet a faith doth work unseeing 
Through the mysteries of being, 
Climbing up the hills of rightness 
Unto skyey realms of whiteness. 



RESURRECTION. 

I was weary of the error 

And the vainness of a quest, 

Of the struggle for the virtues 
Citing tumult to my breast; 



63 



Drifting out on the caprices 

Of a sea unknown and wide, 
Where the shores of pleasure vanished 

In the mists unpacified. 

I would live among the living, 

And not lie the low in dust ; 
But the prayers and hopes were sighing, 

And the vision of the just 

Faintly fluttered on the distance 
Where was perishing the will : 

I must lose me in the darkness, 
All my being chill and still. 

Came a thought from out the vastness 
On the wings of wisdom lowly 

To my soul in bonds, and dying 
For the bread of life the holy : 

And the fetters fell adown me, 

And mine opened eyes saw legions 
Of the spirits bright and beauteous 
Peopling full the mystic regions. 

Ah ! the Voice that calls and calleth, 
Through the weirdness of the seeming, 

To the dead and desolation 

Lying out beyond the dreaming : 

And a glory from remoteness 

All the day upon us filleth, 
And the truths of coming splendor 

In the sons of earth instilleth. 



04 



THE LATTER ME. 

The days at rest ; 
By graces and the worths caressed : 
The soul that quivered with delight, 

Whate'er incite, 

As lustrous air 

From grassy meads, 
When June effuseth of the rare 
And life a resurrection reads 

Of spirit fair 

In holy deeds ; 

And shuddered still at imaged pain, 
Like forest leaves ere storms unrein 
Despotic force of wind and rain, 

Calmly drifteth on the years, 
Peacefully past hopes and fears, 
And realm of the immortal nears ; 

Not dipping oar, 

Nor loosing sail, 
Though whirlpools roar 

And sweeps the gale ; 

Pondering the lofty themes, 
What is real or but seems, 
Ever winnowing the dreams ; 

The search of past 

For truths which last, 
'Mid peoples that o'er earth have passed 
Like autumn leaves before the blast ; 



65 



The farthest knowledge man may find 
Of outer world and inner mind, 
Of Deity and humankind 

And where they duly meet ; 

Of all the stress and strife can mean, 

Or what must wisdom glean, 
And how the man shall make himself complete. 



SOMETIME. 

We suffer, and the years are long, 
But with endurance are we strong; 
And with a gaze of the serene, 
Like star upon the midnight seen, 

We scan the future days that climb 
The rugged heights to the sublime, 
Where duty on the sky dissolves 
And seraph from the serf evolves. 

Not of the crass effrontery, 
A mock of life and Deity, 
But to a sacred faith we hold, 
And wisdom stayeth with the old. 

And somewhere in the reaching space, 
When death disrobes us as a grace, 
Because a patience taught the still 
And the divine was in our will, 

Content shall as existence be x 
And thought attain its potency, 
Unmeasured by the hour and clay, 
Abroad upon the wings, of day. 



66 



FAILURE. 

The seeing child beheld the good, 
And ever an ideal stood 
Among the hopes and high ascents, 
A future of beneficence. 

The wonderful upon the sky- 
Was speaking to the upward eye, 
And feet elastic as the air 
But touched the earth, nor waited there. 

Yet how the swerving lines have erred ! 
For grandeur is the still deferred, 
And taught of meekness I essay 
Fruition of a nobler day. 

No breadth of aid unto my kind 
Depicted by the early mind, 
But labor by the hours led 
Doth meet a due of daily bread. 

A debtor to the vital breath, 
And even sorrow cultureth, 
Caprice of birth and wrought of clay, 
An impulse ruler of the day, 

A baneful blossom of the wild, 
Beyond the limit undefiled, 
Amid a bitter, ceaseless rain : 
There was no joy, but always pain. 

The foolish built upon the sand, 
And great the fall ; nor pride may stand 
On antecessors of the lair : 
I am a constancy of prayer. 



07 



THE DELAWARE. 
O river rare, 
The dear and fair, 
O Delaware ! 
A love I bear 

As thou wert of the upper Good, 

And understood. 
The joy of the winds is in thy waves, 

And my spirit laves 

Its wings earth-stained and heavy with sin, 

The sheen and shimmer, 

The glint and glimmer, 
The bliss of thy peaceful flow within : 

Plying the skilled and earnest oar, 

A zest of the young life's work at play, 
Guiding the skiff on the winds away, 

Rushing and singing the bright waters o'er ; 

On the drifting boat, 
From evil remote 
And the life of rote, 
Ere coarseness smote 

The thought in its inner purity, 

Dreaming the fancies of love and youth, 
When all that seems is living truth, 

And all we wish is life's to be. 

Sin and sadness have led, 
There are years on my head, 
But thou still art youth, 
A joy and the truth. 



68 

OPEN DAYS. 

Lo, nature from her sleep awakening 
Doth cast a veil about her modesty, 

For every tree is now a film of spring : 
Why should she hide her from idolatry ? 

Mine eyes are pure wherewith her grace I view, 
And tender as the sky that bendeth o'er, 

And in their depths a vision of the true, 
O I expire if I may not adore ! 

But she shall live when I am with the night, 
The grasses o'er me thrill, the mornings come, 

And she hath more and better who delight, 
While I am but the less and of the dumb. 

O make us feel not, or bestow a voice, 

And let the curse be thrust to outmost space : 

As innocence why can we not rejoice, 

Expelling from the soul what may deface ? 



MY COUNTRY. 

But not thy grassy hills, nor with the might 

Of mountains that transpierce thy spacious skies, 

O natal land of mine ! and I thy love requite 
With a transcendency of meek replies : 

And not upon thy sateless breadths of plain, 
Nor multitude of peoples, wealth of states ; 

And at thy doors the waters of the main, 
And where amaze the vision dominates 



GO 



Before Missouri and ten thousand streams, 
Transmissive of thy strength and energies ; 

Nor civic freedom even as the dreams : 
But thy salvation and futurities 

Are in the virtues moving to a bourne, 

Thy citizen as duty's servitor, 
And never shall the winds bewail thee lorn, 

Nor thy decadence be a monitor. 



MY ABODE. 

The judgment is thine, 

Maker divine, 

And the duty but mine 
With the right to align. 

1 am not of the dead, 

For the word hath been said; 
And my spirit is fed 
With heaven's own bread. 

No wrath is in thee, 
But complaisancy, 
And thou lookest on me 
Inspiringly, 

As wisdom appears, 
And out of the years, 
Their smiles and the tears, 
A fabric uprears 

Beyond the oppressed 
With ingress for rest, 
Where life at its best 
Doth dwell with thee blest. 



70 

MY BROTHER. 

Who hath his envy of a soaring clay ? 

The zenith's sun is dimming in the eve : 
And if I think the great, I am as they 

For whom the years an acquiescence weave. 

The more, if I discern and do deny 

Accessions of the pompous from below ; 

Nor build vivacities of self on high, 

And based upon the thronging of the slow: 

But lift a brother with me to the height, 

Beyond the words that mock unwonted ear, 

And of the rounded earth afford a sight, 

That he may know him more than is the year, 

And lay his lines athwart the star-abyss. 

A home made not by frail and human hands, 
Unto the dust its own of dead dismiss, 

And be a breathing of the spirit- lands. 



RESPONSE. 

Peace dwelleth with a sacrifice, 

And meekness is a victory, 
But anguish scourgeth selfishness 

Unto the bounds of expiry. 

The nerve in me doth ask content, 
And still appeals against a pain : 

And through the years what this hath meant, 
I seek, nor have I sought in vain. 



71 



I hold a truth within my breast, 
My daily bread is not deceit, 

But I do look on life at best, 

And word and way of mine entreat 

For a perfection in the right, 
For greatness of the inner soul, 

That lasteth far beyond the night, 
And I deny the clay's control. 

O God hath been to me the kind, 
A patience in the pathways just, 

Bestowal of the Christ in mind, 
A revelation o'er the dust. 



REPROACH. 

I hear the voice of living man, a cry 
Within the wilderness of justling deeds : 

Make straight a path where 1 may walk the sky, 
For life of priest is other than his creeds. 

And if but one should measure every way, 
As run the sacred lines of Christ inspired, 

That we should know him as the fires of May : 
But summer of the soul is not acquired 

By moneys of a Mammon church-arrayed, 
Nor bread of life by sweats upon the face : 

The gift of God is never a parade, 
But folly and the foolish interlace. 



72 

VALOUR. 

And when the days their airy portals vide 
Have thrown unto the welcome of the spring, 

Across the thresholds gladsome hours bestride 
To greet me as the coming of a king. 

And life doth fill unto the overflows, 
The eye is exaltation and a light, 

A thought is song and the emotion glows, 
And every nerve is tremulant delight . 

And shall I not maintain me and unmarred ? 

]>ut straightway lower to behest of clay, 
A banishment impure and the outbarrcd 

From spirit and her luminous array ? 

I will not be a sin before the sun, 
But I entrust the Maker for the best : 

Nor can I doubt the life doth farther run, 
As every May and all my wish attest. 



THE MICROSCOPE. 

But what denoteth of the form obscure ? 

Ah ! where the eye that views the small must fail, 
A will upwhirling from the haunt impure, 

The fragilest of tiny ones the frail, 

Doth bear the message of fatality 

Unto a mundane pride that hath forgot : 
"Thou fool ! " and in the night departeth he, 
And morn awakens and remembers not. 



73 



FINITE. 

The vale and its poesy, 

Where the moon and the stream 
Depict an Eden for me, 

While the shadows dream 

In the woody haunts of the eve : 

And I languish away 
In the longing which naught doth relieve, 

Though I sing or pray. 

The tiny gleams do fall 

On the lillied pool, 
And I list, attention's thrall, 

Their whiteness cool. 

The depth of repose in the leaves 

On the water's heart, 
Till almost my spirit believes 

The calm they impart. 

And the day hath translucency, 

But mine eyes are night : 
O strange that a man should be 

Ablind in light ! 

It seemeth the trees might tell 

When whispering low : 
If the little birds would spell 

Their to and fro ! 

By morn or a starry sea, 

My soul expands ; 
But my thought is simplicity 

Nor understands. 



74 



REMEMBRANCE. 

Thou art the greater now, illuminate, 
And I appeal, encumbered by the clay, 

A rudeness of attrition, and irate, 
Unto a thought effulgent as the day ; 

Within the strange mutations seeing far, 
Perchance a contemplation of the force 

That animates alike a will or star. 

And is content the nearer to the source ? 

And if attainment hath its own and peace ? 

May not the ardors flame intenser fire 
Where glory towers glory, nor can cease ? 

Or how comports the life without desire ? 

Perhaps thou art an ether's subtilty, 

And readiest to the motive of the mind ? 

lay thy touches as a harmony 

Upon the froward moods and the unkind ! 

And tell my mother I have built anew, 

Her patient sacrifice is memory, 
Unto the race I give what was her due, 

And thus a merit faileth not to be. 

And if I be the straitened by a rule, 

And though the spites of time hedge in the way, 

1 wish nor vaunt the freedom of the fool, 

And I repel the evil from its prey. 

Or shall the reptile bask a gorged content, 
The forest panther range triumphant night, 

Whilst mind the higher is with madness rent, 
A fierce, insatiate yearning for the light ? 



75 



But still my faith is a proportioned grace, 
For I am of the Christ and combative ; 

And unto him I raise a shining face, 

And on the heavens I shall more than live. 

Or art thou vanished as a mist of morn ? 

But earth hath meanings still beyond the sun : 
But man shall know the wherefore he was born : 

And with the Deity is naught to shun. 



COGNITION. 

The doubts enclosed me as a cloud, 
And passion-storms were fierce and loud ; 
And there was smiting of a life, 
The waters and the cliffs in strife. 

Upon the tumult of the blast, 
The vanities as spray are cast ; 
I hear the moaning of the night, 
And evil wings are on the flight. 

Within the weird and wasting wrath 
Where horror a dominion hath, 
A piteousness is wildly tossed, 
A soul, alone, unseeing, lost. 

But what are all, if one be naught 
Whose being with the all is fraught ? 
And I shall not contemn the cry 
Of him who willeth not to die, 

But make me of his agony, 
A throbbing and a sympathy ; 
And for his failure of the height 
Be more than human in mv might. 



76 



Shall Heaven honor not the race, 
But our humanity efface, 
Because the clay a nerve contains 
And answereth to joys and pains ? 

But sky doth overarch the earth : 
And in the man a mystic birth 
Of thought that lifteth from the sod, 
And he communeth with his God, 

I am a gladdening to see 
The stranger who gives unto me, 
Amii the hasting of the days, 
The word humane of gentle ways. 

And I can not forgotten be, 
A loving voice to Deity, 
Becoming unto him the known ; 
And this the grandeur of mine own. 



MINE AND THINE. 
If I be strong or of the weak, 

A tremor or nobility, 
I wish not all the earth to seek, 

Appeasive of a vanity ; 

But freely, gladly yield a share 
Beyond the stint of envy's eye, 

A welcome as the ambient air, 
Or courtesy of shining sky. 

The virile worths that make a land, 
Ascendence of a thought inspired, 

The epochs are at my command, 
The pulses of my soul attired 



77 



With the concrescence of the race : 
And how can I the thanklessly 

Unto dispute my force abase, 
When but to die were victory ? 

Yet I repel aggressive wrong, 
Supinely nor the right betray ; 

For I am of a purpose long, 

And God hath there the word to say. 



COMPENSATIVE. 

Not thence I seek the voice of a reward, 
The fitful suffrages of folly's horde, 
But from the wisdoms that to live do know 
Where spirit riseth as a tidal flow. 

And I entomb an emulation slain, 
One rivalry the less where surge the vain, 
To be a poise of waiting quietude, 
The unobtrusive force of solitude. 

And what if I should die to me alone ! 
Unto the universe I give its own : 
At best, upon a patience I recline, 
And more of toil than a content is mine. 

That were indeed superior of the sod, 
A star indebted to me as a god ; 
And joy its spacious measures overfills 
In recognition by the grander wills. 

I hear a call that cometh unto me, 

So straight, so clear, across infinity : 

And I will follow through a boundless night, 

And on the morrow faith dissolves in sight. 



78 



APPEAL. 

O men of the earth, that breathe ! 
Whose hearts are not of the dust, 
But your deeds of the bravely just, 

Let the hopes your brow enwreathe 

Of a future unlawless to be, 

When the days with the truths shall run, 
And souls shine out as the sun 

In the living radiancy 

Of the Spirit of all in glow, 

Whose thought is the sphere of right 

And his will the eternal Light 
Of a universe in flow. 

O brethren ! who list to my song, 
Exalted to understand 
The voices abroad in the land, 

Be not overwon with the wrong, 

Nor deem in your feeble ways, 
The law must yield to your will, 
As you heap the measures of ill 

With the plenitude of days. 

The weary accounts reclaim 

Their dues from the far and nigh, 
And the generations lie 

Recumbent beneath a shame, 

Oppressed by the sin of one, 
And the smiting Hand doth fall 
Relentlessly upon all, 

Till the evil be undone, 



79 



Till we learn the secret of things, 
Where folly no longer is known, 
But wisdom ascends the throne 

And the holy a triumph sing. 



ON THE HEIGHTS. 

Not marching armies, not the faiths of trade, 
But bread and thought are only potencies; 

And simple toil is by the earth obeyed, 

In whose near heart the waiting harvest sees 

More than the Syracusan's vain desire ; 

And the great globe is weighed, nor wanting found: 
And I assauge the thirsts of life afire 

With moments spraying where the morns abound. 

O beauteous realms which wisdom governeth ; 

And doth attire the instant with a thought ! 
And as a monarchy of life and death 

All grandly I receive the missive brought, 

An embassy majestic from the past : 

O stately forms with goodness in your mien ! 

To me a greatness in the moral vast ; 
And ye salute the will within me seen, 

The attitude upon the coming time, 

A gaze deflected never from the far : 
For I do know me of a birth sublime, 

And from my heritage shall not debar 

A famine or a falsehood, but I die 

Within the fair, full ken of spirit-eyes, 

The standard of the living truth fast by, 
And knightly yield my soul unto the skies. 



80 



TWILIGHT 

Adown the river to the eve ; 

October tints upon the trees ; 

A misty sun with daylight flees, 
And unto vision doth relieve 

The Western star in silver light, 
The newest moon of crescent line; 
While wave and sky vermilion shine 

Where fascination claims the sight. 

And leaping from the steamer's wake 
The billows to the bright arise 
From where the purple shadow lies; 

And my insistence they partake 

In progress unto beauteousness. 

But rearward far the shades pursue, 

The things unformed, and glooms of view, 

And hidden fiends of restlessness. 

What genii hold the hither shore ? 
A magic scene my fancy notes, 
The senses flee, and being floats, 

And I remember me no more. 

A transformation hath begun 
Within the pure transparency, 
Where twilight museth mystery, 

And skies and waters flow to one. 

Upon enchanted wing I soar 

Unto the realms that softly lie 

Within a duplicated sky : 
And stress is o'er, the stress is o'er ! 



81 



Ah, me ! ah, me ! where have I been ? 
There never is a freedom near, 
Save where the foolish wills inhere, 

A recklessness of mortal sin. 

Abandons land and flood, the light ; 
The dim ones and the spectres glide 
Upon the darkness and the tide : 

The steamer labors into night. 



MILITANT. 

No doubt doth live my thought within 
Of the heroic altitude 

The souls of the severe attain ; 
Yet there is always waiting sin, 
An ambush of the natal rude, 

To smite and lay me with the vain. 

Amid the Snowlands vague and waste, 
A czar of Moscow, battling oft 

Against the warrior of th i Swedes, 
The lines victoriously traced 

Through all dismays, that rose aloft 
Where conquest sitteth with her meeds. 

And in my ceaseless chivalry 
Against the potentates of ill, 

A time shall come of strong repose, 
The calm of a supremacy, 
The life a unit with the will, 

And into night are fled the woes. 



82 

COUNSEL. 

I pray thee, man, condemn me not the weak, 
If sometimes I may question what I know ; 

And all resign me to the methods meek, 

Or steadfast stand where wrong would overflow . 

A human will contesting and to die 

As patriot or martyr the unknown ; 
Or mutely wait and lift not arm on high 

Till deluges upon the earth are thrown. 

The either, God! I bind my hands or smite, 

If so I only am thy purpose true ; 
And as I cannot think beyond thy sight, 

Unfaltering faith shall every hour endue. 



ENFRANCHISED. 

There giveth He 

The victory, 
O'er impulse and the passionate, 
A folly's pride, self-smiting hate, 
The fret in combat with a fate, 
The haste which time can never sate, 

Where battles be 

A majesty. 

The pleasure seen 

Where man hath been, 
The wanderer of Tropic lands 
Wh.cre minutes never are commands, 
The Westward quest of golden sands 
While Palos wonderingly stands, 

With vision keen 

O'er seas between. 



P3 



As eagle's will, 

And soaring still, 
And measuring adown, afar, 
To atoms loving or at war ; 
Across the night whence hopes unbar, 
And soul is mated with a star ; 

For life can fill 

And ever thrill : 

The epic song 

Which men prolong 
Upon the voice of simple days ; 
The melody of lyric 1 
As angel tones whose music stays 
The rudeness of the lower ways 

And winneth wrong 

From its wild throng. 

And yet the joy, 

So full, so coy, 
Which I would have through prayers and tears, 
And hold amid the suffering years, 
The one content in all the spheres 
Possessing evermore endears, 

And doth destroy 

The dread annoy, 

Cometh to me 

With De 
The peace ennobling as a king ; 
And duty like a love can sing ; 
A deathless thought unfoldeth wing 
Upon the blest, eternal spring : 

Oh God ! to me 

The loving be. 



84 

TAUGHT. 

The man is haughtiness, though not his own, 
But freeth to the universe his force, 

Howe'er he willeth a caprice to throne, 
Or ill to be an unimpeded course. 

And though awhile a tyranny avail, 

Or liberty elicit lie and lust, 
A cry of pain increaseth on the gale, 

And shame disrobes above the moldering dust. 

I make a wisdom from the unwise past, 
And insurrection of the mean do quell ; 

And in the bonds of Christ I bind me fast: 
( \ there shall be a limit unto hell ! 



MOCKED. 

The early years were freedom, as I read : 
But now against the future they do stand, 

Infringements of the best of me instead, 

An adverse host with raised and smiting hand. 

If I had known before my strength was wrought! 

And prudence seemeth but a sneer so late, 
When nerve succumbs, with passion overfraught, 

And vehemency hath consumed her state. 

Or doth the outer purpose quench the will ? 

And all the spirit of the human fled, 
With pendent hinds and feet that are the still, 

He meekly lieth down among the dead. 



85 

AGE TO APPETITE. 

What meaneth this ? 
Thou hast betrayed me with a kiss ! 

Thou didst conspire 
With youth and hope and strength my life to fire 

With earth's desire : 
And now thou dost confess thee of the liar 

And lower mire ; 

And what I was, thy transiency, 
And I am but senility. 

Why would I heed ? 
And yet there seemed a living voice on passion freed, 

And I the heir of day : 
Nor could I know the phantoms had a sway, 

The dearths in ambush lay : 
But I did follow as the children play, 

Unnoted way. 

And judgment unarouscd saw not the coming dole, 
Till I awoke with ruin in my soul. 



DENIAL. 

I am the mortal, shaped of dust and pain, 
And deep into a loneliness I go, 

The sepulture of hopes that were the vain : 
And I abide the wasting of the snow. 

With sombre incantations and severe 
I seek a path that leadeth up the sk\ ; 

But forms forbidding and the sins appear 
And with a mockery and death ally. 



86 



NUMBERED. 

Had earth and time and men and mind 

Sped on their flight 

To sure d°light, 
And left me passionless and blind ; 

Sensation's dower, 
O'erworn in serfdom to the hour, 
An impotency and disuse ; 

As 'neath the dews 

A stillness, unawaking night ? 

And better dead, 
Than strewing shadows in the light, 

And phantom-led. 



THE ALBATROSS. 

On the soaring wing 

And beyond the high, 
On and afar and measuring 

A thousand leagues of sea and sky, 
A freedom 1 roam the ambient air, 

The victor of space like a thought of right, 
Ocr the everywhere 

Excelling and might. 

Now the winds are power, 

And the heavens smite; 
The ship and her crew, the gulfs devour ; 

The day is o'ercomc by the tempest's night; 
And chaos dissolving the great earth seems, 

As wrath and a ruin on conquest sweep ; 
And the terrible teems 

When Law is asleep. 



87 

Yet a magic of sway 

My pinions do keep, 
A grandeur amid the storm's array ; 

And beneath the emulous billows leap: 
But I mock the rage with a warring cry, 

The spirit is mine that doth attain, 
The passions die, 

The wills remain. 

Now peace is come 

Unto the Main ; 
The demons of unrest are duml 

And vehemence is with the vain : 
I am a trance 'neath the serene, 

Upon the wave a pure repose 
The depths between 

That were the foes. 

A dream of the nest 

On the vying rock, 
„ht in the eye and a thrill in the breast, 

And the wonderful wings their ways unlock : 
And the seas of the Southern Zone are below, 

The horizons breathe a chill from the night, 
Forsaken and woe 

And turned from delight. 

A flight and a day, 

And the striving land 
Affixeth a term where the waters inveigh ; 

And the buoyant bird of the breeze doth stand 
Communing with home in the guarding rift, 

While memories throng of winds that speed, 
Where oceans lift 

And skies exceed. 



88 



REBUKE. 

I love, O Christ ! the purity of thine, 
A rapture of simplicity divine ; 
And I do clothe me mutely on with awe, 
And straitly lay my life unto thy law. 

Who standeth on the false can not endure, 
Descending in his ways to the impure ; 
And Time voraciously consumes the souls 
That seek the vanities as only goals. 

The vulpine wish is toiled within its wile, 
Assembled error doth itself beguile, 
And force unjust, though strong as Roman old, 
Is smitten by the savage from the wold. 

They taunted Vandals are that rudely lay 
The marble fanes in ruinous array, 
Whilst ye contemning them, do still abase 
The lines of moral beauty in the race. 



LIVING. 

The Brethren of the Common Life shall wed 
The contacts that evoke the troublous ill, 

Where patience sitteth at his daily bread, 
And as a flint the virtues flash their will. 

The struggle may disclose ineptitude, 
The efforts as a parent do outgive, 

And grace is strength and overcomes the rude, 
And calmness is a truth contemplative. 



89 



Retiracy begets an indolence, 

And monkish modes are not the chivalries ; 
For man should be a pressure and intense 

Amid the strivings and complexities. 

But not the lower cunning may be used, 
Ensnaring as a fraud the less of power, 

Or victim will he be, the right refused, 

When he doth meet a self of greater hour. 

Cut a stability his purpose holds, 

Intendment of the better for the race, 

Unto inspection day and clue unfolds, 
And doth a grandeur for a good efface. 



SELF. 
I am but creature, yet within me find, 

And not the less because a sufferer, 
A piteousness for worlds of humankind : 

Then why not the Creator's love infer ? 

There seemeth scarce a choice when years are strong, 
And youth is dashed athwart contending seas, 

Where passions unrestrained do urge along, 
Whilst law is flowing to the symmetries. 

And if a blinded brother fall to sin, 
Not this a suasion I shall cast me down 

Where loathsomeness and sequent anguish win 
The base equality of ill's renown. 

But wisdom warily doth scan the slough, 
And later peoples found an empire there, 

Nor unto failure will a scope allow : 

And in the dearth I closer clasp the rare. 



<J0 



PERFECTING. 

I will not weary of the right to be, 
Though lowliness my days accompany 
Along the valley of obscurity 

The times must duly yield a recompense 
To him that tramples on the hour's pretense 
And union maketh with Omnipotence. 

The lengthening eras strangely intervene ; 
And wrong with Victor's scornful smile is been ; 
Within her courts the worshippers unclean, 

That in the marts impatiently await, 

Or throng the portals of the church and state 

The wo ful pur] f self to sate : 

Who build with folly and upon the vain, 
Transmute a brother's weakness to their gain, 
And to his ignorance a glory feign 

0( words that mean not and the forms of air: 
And oft I am a muteness and despair, 
With righteousness elusive everywhere. 

But perturbation of the starry spheres 
Within harmonious movement re-appears: 
So rectitude enfolding all the years 

Adjusts the waywardness of mortal will, 
And e'en extinguisheth the souls of ill 
Whose obstinacies choose the error still. 

O thought of mine ! be resolute to win 
Approval of the one who knew no sin, 
Enacting rule divine thy modes within : 



91 



Spread far thy pinions, soul ! upon the light, 
Attain beyond the shadows and the night, 
Volition of the Everlasting: Right 



ACCRETION. 
A measure I give unto you, 
O seeker alone of the true ! 
And ye shall to your stature make, 
If the thought ye wholly take, 

A cubit and more of the man, 
As the doers undoubting can, 
About the good who revolve 
Heroic of human resolve ; 

Whose metes shall countervail 
The perishing of the years, 
And its magnitudes not fail 
With the galaxy of the spheres : 

A precept that brightly shone 
In creation's primal morn, 
And a jubilant hymn upon 
The spaces when Christ was born : 

Neath the laws of thy growth receive, 
And thy fullness can never grieve. 
If thou give with a holy will, 
As the waters descend from the hill, 

Denuding the cliff in their flow 
For the good of the vale below : 
So shall thy effluence be 
Of the smile of Deity. 



92 



BY SEARCHING. 

I do lament the ill 
Within my little spheres to others done, 
Since patience can be mine till time hath run 

Its cycle to fulfil 

The purpose of the world. 
It is a strength when one doth calmly wait, 
And in his soul emotion of the great, 

Nor ever vaguely whirled 

The moment and the creed : 
But every search affirms the certainty 
OOd and evil from futurity 
Exacted by the deed. 

Yet I can only know 
The impress upon me that nature mak< 
And open wide my thought, as wisdom wakes, 

Unto divines! How. 

And finding there a path, 
1 walk with Christ upon the hallowing years, 

Whilst every duty of my Life endears, 
And dead are fear and wrath. 



WHY? 

And though outstrown above the heavens lie, 
Whence zephyrs and the shining stars do fall, 

Whose splendor neither day nor night may die, 
And from their depths solemnity doth call, 






Is He a scorn, and worketh the inane ? 

The summer's suns, the gentle of the word ; 
The answer of the grass unto the rain ; 

And who avowal of the rose hath heard ? 

The long gradation from the mire to mind, 

The meditations of a Nazareth ; 
A time and space that know the unconflned; 

And thou, sublimity ! abate thy breath, 

A mortal uttereth to Deity ! 

Lo, each is marvel and significance, 
And entering life, unto Infinity 

With meet expression doth the Why elance. 



HEROISM. 

O it demandcth valour of the high 
To abnegate the temporal that seek- : 

But t Is the lie, 

Whilst the inordinate a vengeance wreaks. 

Thou art the strong, is my soliloquy, 

And thou must be quiescence 'neath revile, 

Xor a commotion where the wanton be, 
And greatness is not built upon a guile. 

The stations condescend unto the worths ; 

And for a form wouldst thou be discontent ? 
But permanency doth outlast the earths; 

And lo, the veil of heaven hath been rent ! 



94 



A DEMISE. 

Profound as the depths where sitteth despair, 
Whose realms nor echo of curse nor of prayer, 
Are the needs of the foolish throngs of time : 
And who holds the truth that ruleth all clime ? 

But a courtesy never in the mart, 
A kindness bubbling up from the heart, 
The day and the deed unthralled of chicane, 
The countenance glad and the will humane : 

O these are the modes whose impacts divine 
Transmit hope and purpose along every line : 
They vanish ; the living are fierce and untaught; 
And my mind with a muteness of wonder is fraught. 

King of the voiceless ! hearken, delay : 
The years overweary await thee to-day ; 
The world with all of waywardness teems ; 
At the altar of God a madness blasphemes : 

Reach thither the strength of thine arm and smite, 
And reason shall justify thy right : 
But childhood that doth my high hope allure, 
A blossom promising of the pure, 

A future encompassed by every worth, 
Tender of heaven and valiant of earth, 
What rapine is this, O Remorseless of Gaze ? 
And judgment is stilled in a dread amaze ! 

The shadow of Death : and the silences serve ; 
For a mandate resounds that never doth swerve : 
The pulses are chill with the breath of the tomb, 
And the grave-eyed thoughts contemplate a doom. 



95 



ENTRUSTING. 
I am the gentle and can not assume, 

Yet as the eye of morn examining ; 
Nor may release the venomed arrow's doom, 

Since thought and life are ever broadening. 

The lines in me that fall to the unmeet, 
I do condemn more than another's crime : 

The partisans the prince's power greet, 
The man alone outliveth space and time. 

I gather but to give and never hoard ; 

And I do not return upon my will, 
Where wholly I entrust unto the Lord 

The beautiful recurrences that fill 

The steadfast days with morn and noon and eve; 

And each doth have its full of given bread, 
And duty never doth its task aggrieve ; 

And plenteously the hours their blossoms shed 

Of clustered leisures, tiny stars that strew 
And little suns to shine where I amend. 

And though I am not eminent of view 
Where men with immortality contend, 

If I may love the law that claspeth me, 

A flowering cogency of fair intent, 
What joy the nobler and so constantly 

To grace a brief and creatural extent ! 



INTERDICTION. 

Though night approacheth fast, 

Not therefore rest ; 
Not that the day is past, 

Am I the blest. 



9G 



A breath as a prayer in the morn, 

The noon as a deed, 
And the eve as a spirit born 

Where I recede. 

A duty and in the light, 
For mine eye was clear ; 

And the dark is below the height, 
Where the skies are near. 

And never I note the hour, 

I sleep to awake ; 
And I toil with a serious power 

Till life shall break. 

I can not absolve the wrong 

I fall unto; 
But the bird and his matin song, 

Arc they the true ? 

I am a freedom, and see* 

What means the firet ? 
For a king is but slavery 

Of a greater debt. 

A task and a yea I owe 

To daily bread, 
That the living days may know 

Me not the dead. 

But the longer spaces to Him 
Who made me thought ; 

And the perfect man I limn 
With light inwrought. 



97 



THE DYING BABE. 

A little life that fades and fades : 
O tiny battle of a breath 
Against the fate that hovereth ! 

And all my anguished heart upbraids 

The strange, far need of suffering 
Expressive in thy constant moan. 
Nor evil thine dost thou atone 

Where vainly striveth wandering 

Thy soul to fill the vacant eye, 
To make a light within its blue, 
The light of mind that would construe 

The meanings of an unknown sky. 

And claspeth mine a help to crave, 

Thy livid hand entreatingly, 

And tossing arms so punily 
Deny the forces of the grave. 

I am the warm, the firm of years, 
Thy instinct reaching forth to me: 
But though I give my heart to thee, 

Alas ! alas ! but tears, but tears. 

Within the dark, and so alone, 
A strife, an evil bitterness, 
A wasting, and a woful stress ! 

And indignation of mine own 

Rebelliously the heart incites ; 
And I do ask, with open eye, 
Unbending, statured to the sky : 

Armeth a universe its mights 



98 



Thy morn unconscious to convulse, 
To hold thee from the higher hill, 
To lose thee ere thou hast a will, 

And quell the transitory pulse ? 

And yet there is not on my breath 

But patience lengthened with the times, 
Where slowly resolution climbs 

Unto the calmness of a death. 

I am not strength that thou shouldst cling : 
But though I weld the wrong with day, 
Or for the right my hours array, 

I am a son of suffering : 

And I do meekly learn of thee 
The way that falleth unto death : 
And if the man recovereth 

Another flight of energy ! 

The moan hath ended ; pain is o'er ; 

The struggle yieldeth to the ill ; 

Thy baby form is very still ; 
And death saluteth at the door. 

I may not paint thy minutes fled, 

Occluded from a poesy, 

Transference of an infancy 
Unto a life beyond the dead. 

If thou art naught, what portion mine ? 

Thou knowest not of being's loss ; 

Whilst I do gaze the grave across, 
And range along the mental line 



99 



Where life increaseth to the vast. 

And now to fail, ah ! that were curse ; 

And mocketh me the universe 
Through all the wild and warring past. 

If I shall live, oh ! why not thou, 
That art the germ of living soul, 
A sinless will o'ercome with dole ? 

Or may I not in calm avow, 

There hath no need for thee and me 
Beyond a dull and clayey doom ; 
There is a foiling at the tomb ; 

We were not ; we can cease to be ? 

If men were few, not multitude, 
My hope proportion would attain, 
That we are more than summer rain, 

And advents that do not illude. 

But I recoil to the appalled 

Before the thronging eras fraught, 
Whose teeming tribes oppress my thought, 

The peoples by the grave enthralled : 

And have they being in the space, 

Alert, envisaging the sun, 

Xo soul forever the undone, 
Immortal as a thought, a grace ? 

Or when may we assent to die, 
If not whilst overlaid with dust ? 
Not' surely where the days entrust 

As to a god dominion high ? 



100 



But, yea, a life the senses make ; 
And I behold the acts of men, 
When passeth night, return again 

Unto a folly, nor forsake ; 

As time ensphered them and their all, 
The clash of momentary wills 
Beneath the doom of preying ills, 

And final earth a covering pall. 

Or what become the orders less 
That rove the various vital realm, 
Which broadly lieth to o'erwhelm 

A soaring science in distress ? 

I huh not my dog a loyalty ? 

Or seeketh but the giving hand ? 

And in the high rule of the land 
A tiger's fell diplomacy. 

And from the rude, the adulant, 

How doth the heart within me burn 
That men will never, never learn ! 

For a simplicity I pant, 

A grand, exhaustive manhood laid 
Upon the magnitudes that spread ; 
A zeal by knowledge gently led ; 

The motives in the light arrayed : 

The open, ever-reaching sky, 

A nrr communion with the dawn, 
Unto the Godhead vortex-drawn, 

Intense, contained, the life on high. 

THE END. 




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